Cool. Deep.
My 2 pennies, as I’ve created and led a few agencies throughout my life, but never a Bubble one 
Find your niche as narrow as possible.
Client’s type budget, size
even location.
For example, I prefer the Nordics and less Italians, French, just how I interact with them.
It’s even better if it’s an industry or vertical.
I’ve had a translation agency for Digital products that was interested in expanding their products to Russian or Romanian-speaking countries. Had clients like WinZip, McAfee and Google. I narrowed it even more, Online Security products and Online Gambling (it was trendy at that time)
Another one, a BIM agency (building information management), working exclusively with UK, as this vertical has strict Requirements and Standards, so when approaching a client and telling them, we’ll help your company comply with BS 1192 it was an easy sell point.
VR/AR, WordPress, 3d apps were another example, so when I discovered Bubble.io for one of my MVP, I was already sick of this business model. But anyway, when needed to build for money, based on my strength, I also discovered my niche: clients who want to test their ideas, and need a quick MVP V01, max V02.
I had a few 6+months full-time projects, which I didn’t enjoy at all.
Once you have defined your niche, it’s easier to price it, promote, standardise procedures etc.
I have a friend who combined his photography hobby with WordPress knowledge and is 100% into this niche, selling at much higher rates his WordPress niche themes.
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Late to the party but this is an incredibly valuable post. Thank you so much for writing it.
I’m very interested to hear you say you could make more just going solo. I’m solo currently and I feel like the only way to scale earnings is to go the agency route and hire. But it’s just like you said: I want to build stuff, not manage people.
Any tips on how to scale solo earnings?
Detach your value and positioning from hours to output.
If you work twice as fast you COULD charge $400/hr, but nobody is going to because they compare you to other hourly rates.
When you charge hourly, you and your skills are treated like a commodity. When you have an offer beyond hours, they value it based on the difference you’ll make.
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So you got to Gold status by working primarily on existing apps? If so, that’s very interesting!
We’ve done like two new builds in the last year. We work almost exclusively on existing apps.
The simple fact is that most new apps aren’t successful. Working on existing apps means we only work with apps that are revenue generating and have a significant business need to solve their problems (their business IS Bubble)
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Yes, we work only on new apps that have already been funded (non bubble agency)
The other thing that Bubble developers overestimate is a client’s inclination for speed.
Good clients, for the most part, don’t care about speed (for a new build). They’d rather get it right over a couple months than work with an agency that promises a two week turnaround.
So, if your entire positioning is around ‘we build MVP in 3 weeks!’ it’s not really a sell.
What CAN be a sell is the process (which happens to be a specific duration of time) because a process reduces risk and improves perceived chance of success which lets you charge more.
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I think it depends the market has different kinds of clients , some want speed fast mvps to get investors or to test their idea then some want a version one they can get to market the pie is big enough for developers to serve each
Sure, I’m just saying that if you sell speed, you’re much less likely to find higher ticket proejcts than if you sell reliability and business outcomes.
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Yes I agree